Angel...?
An angel...?
The Thebai Desert. A desert located in the northern part of the continent, bordering Elbritte and a number of other kingdoms.
Because of that, there had been many attempts over the years to claim the desert as territory, but in the end, no one had ever managed to touch it, and the place was left to rot as wasteland.
"Why do you think that was?"
"The reason is obvious."
At the desert's boundary, where the sand-laden wind blew in, Pharaoh, who had been gazing at the desert with satisfaction, turned his head.
"Because those weaklings were too pathetic to take it. The desert is never a place to be trifled with."
"You're telling me even the Empire couldn't manage it?"
"Empire? Please. Those fools are worse than mere kingdoms."
Pharaoh's scathing assessment continued, but I found myself studying the Empire longer than I studied the desert.
It was true that the Empire's current strength was child's play compared to the past—but if you asked me whether that meant they couldn't conquer a single desert, well, no. That wasn't quite it.
The Empire had Hwangyeolgong, of royal blood, along with Magonggong and Yeongsingong. Beyond them, it still boasted plenty of formidable figures who could bring down an entire kingdom single-handedly.
Besides, Besk had once been the Duke of Ronhadia, the predecessor of Elbritte—and Ronhadia had lived beside the desert for ages.
Which meant the desert had existed long before Besk became a Duke or one of the Eight Swords.
'The Empire pursues profit. If the losses outweigh the gains, they simply don't attempt it. There must be a reason the desert was never conquered all this time.'
"So there would have been losses..."
What on earth had the Empire feared so much that they left the desert alone?
Thoom! Thoom!
Pharaoh's stone body thudded forward. Whether he was thoroughly excited or not, he crossed the boundary in no time and headed straight into the desert beyond. I walked slowly up beside him.
"Keep this in mind. We're going to persuade the villagers. Not to rob them of their land on a whim."
"Weren't we going to conquer it?"
"You said it yourself, didn't you? A great ruler is not determined by blood and the sword alone."
If something could be resolved without shedding blood, then that was how it should be done. I wasn't a raider, after all.
"Quite right. But surely showing a little authority is acceptable."
"Authority? Don't tell me you mean threatening them while turning the desert upside down."
"Threatening!"
Pharaoh denied it vehemently. He would merely show them. Show them whose origin the ground beneath their feet traced back to!
"Once they witness great power, everyone will acknowledge it. Who the true ruler is, that is."
"We've agreed to call that a threat, remember?"
"...In any case, do not interfere. I have clearly granted your request, and in return you are to help me claim the desert."
With that, Pharaoh resumed his halted steps. For all his talk, he wouldn't actually threaten them. Before the incident, he had been hailed as a wise leader and held the people's respect, after all.
'Until the incident happened, anyway.'
The tribal village was farther out than I'd expected. An ordinary person would have needed quite a long time to get there, but I was not an ordinary person—and Pharaoh was not a person at all.
Even walking at a leisurely pace, the trip took only thirty minutes. Monsters occasionally popped out along the way, but a single glare from Pharaoh sent them fleeing.
It wasn't fear that drove them off. Most of the desert monsters living here possessed very low intelligence, and Pharaoh wasn't emitting anything overtly threatening either.
"They recognize a great authority."
They fled because of Pharaoh's innate dominion. Whether it had always been so, or whether the long years he'd spent ruling the desert had made it so, I couldn't say—but Pharaoh had been the Emperor of the Desert.
No matter how weakened he'd become, low-intelligence monsters could not escape his reign.
"You're not planning to use that on the villagers too, are you?"
"What do you take an Emperor for? Those scuttling vermin retreated of their own accord, lacking even a sense of self. Humans with minds of their own would bow their heads of their own volition, without me lifting a finger."
"..."
"...Well, there are exceptions, of course."
"Exactly."
Amid Pharaoh's grumbling, we finally arrived at the tribal village. Just as Besk's report had said, it was remarkably small.
About the size of the Small Village I'd once lived in, maybe? The population didn't even reach fifty, and aside from a small oasis at the village's center, there was nothing of note. No one who looked particularly strong, either.
"Something's odd here."
"What is?"
"This is a village that must have survived for hundreds of years—yet the fact that it's survived in this state is strange. Kingdoms would have passed through here, time and again."
The only village remaining in the vast desert. People lived here, but it wasn't some hidden settlement. If you could handle the desert monsters and the heat, it was a place well within reach—and above all, the area nearby teemed with monsters in the level 70s and 80s.
Even a single scorpion there rivaled the knights of a minor kingdom. The idea that villagers who looked like they couldn't kill one orc had endured for centuries, generation after generation, made no sense.
"...It is certainly suspicious."
Shhh...
The desert sand gathered in Pharaoh's hand. The sand, swirling as if greeting its master, floated in the air for a moment—then hurtled straight toward the village with tremendous force.
The sandstorm would smash the village to pieces—
PAAANG!
─!
──!
—except it didn't. It trickled harmlessly into the empty air.
"There's something in that village."
"A barrier, it looks like. Some kind of shamanic ward."
An invisible dome was defending the entire village. I'd never heard any mention of this existing.
We drew closer to the village. It still hummed steadily, radiating its unseen protection.
Why on earth had nobody known about this? With my and Pharaoh's perception, there was no way we could have missed it.
"Who goes there?"
As we approached the village entrance, someone came out to meet us—a man draped entirely in stark white cloth, his face the only thing uncovered. He regarded us with eyes brimming with wariness.
Judging by his bearing and the people standing behind him, he was probably the chief.
"And who might you be, coming to visit this place?"
"We've come to deliver some good news."
"?"
The chief, a man named Ans, had been peacefully tending the camels when word of something absurd came rushing out with him. The relic that had protected the tribe for generations had sent an attack signal.
The ancestors had weathered countless monster assaults and repeatedly repelled incursions by outside forces—all through the relic's power. The village's relic was truly extraordinary.
Of course, strength aside, the desert where the tribe dwelt was nothing but barren waste. The people of this continent, overflowing with fertile and livable land, had never bothered to spare the desert much interest, and the tribe itself had nothing special about it.
Once, a massive collective calling itself the 'Empire' had come this way, but after inspecting the relic a few times, they had simply vanished.
"Hmm."
"..."
So what on earth were these two?
"The tribe's name is Thebai... the same as the desert. It probably came from the tribe's name, I'd guess?"
"Likely so. I've heard the tribe had contact with outsiders in the past."
"..."
The two beings standing before Ans. One was a stone statue that looked straight out of ancient ruins—a golden mask radiating sheer majesty, with golden eyes glinting from behind it. Even with the relic's protection, an inexplicable awe made his head bow on its own.
He hated to admit it, but the statue seemed to radiate something on par with the village's 'relic' itself.
'And the other one...'
"Chief Ans?"
"Y-yes!"
"Are you alright?"
An angel.
She was an angel, plain and simple. Long blue hair falling to her waist, and blue eyes that sparkled like light on the oasis. Her beauty had captured the gaze of everyone in the tribe, and her white clothes, though similar to what they wore here, belonged to a different dimension entirely.
"As you've seen, the tribe's rights will be fully guaranteed. If you wish, you may relocate to the duchy. Citizenship, of course, will be granted as well."
"..."
"That said, you're also free to continue living here in the tribe. If you and the tribe members so wish, I promise that not an inch of tribal land will be touched. Should you want development, we will help you with it."
"An angel...?"
"No."
At that word, the expression of the woman called Lily—if not an angel—froze solid.
...Didn't people usually like being called an angel?
Feeling the air turn abruptly frosty, Ans cleared his throat—ahem!—and lifted the paper covered in dense writing.
"...So, to summarize. You intend to develop the desert, and since our tribe sits at the center of it, you wish to bring us into your kingdom. Is that correct?"
"Precisely."
"...Why, though? There's nothing here."
This place was wasteland. He'd never so much as heard a rumor of resources beneath the ground—it was nothing but harsh, barren dirt crawling with monsters.
If there was something here they didn't know about, they could have simply taken what they wanted and left the tribe to its own devices.
'Anyone greedier would have seized the tribe by force.'
But these two hadn't done that.
"Actually, that's exactly why."
"?"
"Because someone here is quite fond of this sort of wasteland. We need the wasteland exactly as it is."
"Hmm, hmm."
"..."
...He couldn't make heads or tails of their thinking.
Ans let out a sigh. Whatever the case, there was little he could do. The relic's power was formidable, but it wouldn't attack or drive out anyone who bore no hostility toward them.
And even setting the relic aside, his people were hardly versed in combat. There were plenty of stories of battles in the past, but during Ans's time as chief, they hadn't fought so much as watched from inside the barrier.
Letting these two into the village at all had been done entirely on faith in the relic.
"...It's not that there's truly nothing here, actually."
Ordinarily he would have kept silent, but since they were joining them now, he supposed he ought to say it.
"?"
"Long ago, a former chief—my father, rather—once told us."
Beneath this land.
Beneath the desert, to be exact.
"That there lies a great ancient ruin."